Instructions for authors

Scope

Submit work in pharmaceutics, drug delivery, pharmaceutical technology or biopharmaceutics, or closely related work in which a pharmaceutical product or delivery system remains the centre of the paper. Aims & scope is the authority on subject fit. Purely biomedical, clinical, microbiological, molecular or materials-science work without a substantive pharmaceutical component is out of scope and is returned without external review.

Article types

Choose the type that matches the work, not the type that sounds largest. The article-types list is editor-managed: original research, review articles, short communications, case reports, perspectives, commentaries and editorials.

Editorials are commissioned. Unsolicited manuscripts labelled as editorials are recategorised or returned.

Manuscript preparation

Use a clear, readable layout: double-spaced text is acceptable; line numbers help reviewers. SI units. Define abbreviations at first use.

Split the package: an anonymised manuscript file and a title page. Acknowledgements, funding and author names belong on the title page, not in the file sent to reviewers.

Title page

The title page is not anonymised. It should carry:

• Article title, article type and a short running title.
• All author names, affiliations and the corresponding author with a working email.
• ORCID iDs where the author has one. Do not invent an ORCID.
• Word count, number of figures and tables, and any clinical or animal ethics identifiers.
• Funding, competing interests and acknowledgements — kept off the anonymised file.

Abstract

Research articles should use a structured abstract (Background, Methods, Results, Conclusions). Other types may use an unstructured abstract, or none if the article type says so.

Do not cite references in the abstract. Do not claim clinical efficacy on the basis of a preclinical study.

Keywords

Provide four to eight keywords that a reader would actually search. Prefer terms already used in the field over neologisms.

Main text

Original research follows IMRaD: Introduction, Methods, Results, Discussion, with a short Conclusion if needed. Methods must be sufficient to repeat the work. Results and discussion may be combined only when that serves the reader.

Reviews and perspectives use headings that fit the argument. Case reports should not be dressed as trials.

References

Use Vancouver style, numbered in the order of appearance. Include a DOI when the cited work has one. Do not cite a DOI that does not exist.

Datasets, software and preprints are cited in the same list, with enough detail to retrieve them.

Figures

Each figure needs a number, a caption that can be read without the main text, alt text, and a credit if the image is not the authors’ own.

Do not submit decorative scientific imagery that is not data. Micrographs need scale bars. Graphs need labelled axes and units.

Tables

Tables are data, not screenshots of spreadsheets. Use a caption, header cells and footnotes for abbreviations. Wide tables must remain readable when scrolled horizontally.

Supplementary material

Supplementary files are for material that supports the paper but would break the reading line: extended methods, extra figures, checklists, datasets that are not in a repository yet.

If a file is not deposited, do not describe it as available. Link a repository accession when you have one.

Ethics

Name the reviewing committee and the protocol or approval identifier for human and animal work. Observational work using only anonymised, already-collected records should say so plainly. Plant and natural-product studies should include identification, origin and collection permits where those are required.

Work that required approval and does not have it will be returned.

Consent

Case reports and any identifiable human image or narrative need consent for publication, distinct from consent to treatment. If consent cannot be obtained, the manuscript should not include identifying detail.

Funding

List funders and grant numbers, or state that there was no external funding. The role of the funder in design, analysis and the decision to submit should be stated when the funder had a role.

Conflicts

Declare financial and non-financial competing interests for every author, or state that there are none. Employment by a company whose product is studied is a competing interest whether or not the author feels conflicted.

Author contributions

Use a CRediT-style statement (conceptualisation, methods, analysis, writing, supervision, and so on). Every listed author must have a contribution; every substantial contributor should be an author or named with consent in acknowledgements.

Data availability

State where the underlying data live, under what licence, and any genuine restriction (privacy, dual-use). “Available from the authors on request” is acceptable only when a restriction is explained. Do not promise a repository deposit that has not been made.

AI use

Generative AI is not an author. If it was used substantially to draft text, generate or alter images, or write code that appears in the paper, say which tool and for which task. Authors remain responsible for every sentence, figure, reference and claim.

Do not upload confidential manuscript material, unpublished data, proprietary information or peer-review documents to external AI systems if that could compromise confidentiality or intellectual property. Undisclosed AI-generated text or images are treated as a reporting failure. Using AI to check grammar may be mentioned briefly; it does not replace a human reading.

Submission checklist

Before you submit, run the checklist on the submission guidelines page. Packages that omit ethics, anonymisation or the article type are returned from editorial assessment, not sent to reviewers.